Animal research is vital to fighting AIDS

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People gathered at a luncheon for World AIDS Day held at Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, to honor loved ones passed and surviving with HIV and AIDS through friendship, artwork, poetry and song.
Long Beach December 1, 2017. Photo by Brittany Murray, Press Telegram/SCNG

December 1 is World AIDS Day, a time to reflect on a disease that has upended the lives of millions of people and their families.

There have been marked improvements in our approach toward HIV since its discovery in 1983. Then, infection was a death sentence; now, medical advances have made it a manageable chronic disease.

Much work remains: Some 37 million people worldwide have contracted the virus, with 5,000 new infections per day. However, progress in fighting AIDS will face critical setbacks if radical animal activists are able to ban animal research.

Animal research for medical purposes has a history of doing a great deal of good in the world.

Consider the famous success story of Jonas Salk, who used rhesus macaques to study the effects and the prevention of the polio virus starting in the 1940s. From his research—including the valuable contribution from the monkeys—a vaccine was developed and polio was virtually eliminated by 1965.

Today, a disease that crippled people since ancient times is nearly eliminated thanks to animal testing.

The eradication of polio is not an isolated success.

Manic-depressive disorder was once treated with lobotomies and electroconvulsive therapy. Thanks to animal research, treatment underwent a revolution and today, patients are treated with lithium, not invasive procedures laden with side effects.

A good deal of research concerning AIDS/HIV involves animal research. The research is done out of necessity. It is widely acknowledged that this valuable research cannot be replaced by petri dishes or computer models.

AZT, an early and effective AIDS drug, was developed using animal studies. Truvada, a newer drug that both treats HIV patients and prevents infection, was developed and evaluated using macaques. “Animal models of HIV infection, especially the rhesus macaque, have played a major role in developing and testing these treatments,” wrote one scientist involved with the drug.

Yet animal activists want to shut down all animal research—period—claiming it is wasteful and unnecessary. The head of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), for instance, has stated, “Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS…we’d be against it.” And the Animal Liberation Front, a designated terrorist group by the FBI that is linked to over a thousand crimes, has made intimidating researchers a central part of its activism.

Recently, PETA targeted the head of the National Institutes of Health for harassment, writing letters to his neighbors smearing him. The NIH spends billions on medical research annually and consider animal research a vital tool.

Animal activists have even gone so far as to detonate explosives targeting researchers and beat scientists with baseball bats.

Animal welfare should be protected, and there is strict oversight of any animal research. But it’s a vital tool that should be supported. You likely know at least one person who owes their life to animal research. Do you enjoy living in a world where anesthesia makes complicated surgeries possible? Thank animal research. Are you grateful for the lives saved by heart valve replacement? Thank animal research. In the 1800s, 25 percent of deaths in Europe were from tuberculosis. Today, the same disease effectively has a mortality rate of zero in developed countries. Again, thank animal research.

Imagine how different the world would be if it weren’t for the contribution animals have made to medical research.

We are closer today to a cure for AIDS than ever before. Those diagnosed with HIV today have roughly the same life expectancy as the rest of the population. Scientists can predict with 91 percent accuracy whether monkeys injected with a vaccine will be protected from SIV, the simian cousin of HIV. This is cause for hope, and a signal that further research should not be deterred or banned.

Animal research has resulted in a better world, not only for humans, but for pets in need of medical attention. Considering the virtual eradication of diseases including polio and tuberculosis, should people really not dream of a similar end for HIV and AIDS? If a cure is within reach, we have a moral obligation to grasp it and create a better world.

Gregory T. Angelo is a political consultant and the former President of Log Cabin Republicans.